It strikes me that todays children don't play with toys of this nature so I imagine it might be a "skill" which is lost in the midsts of time.
I can just imagine a few tens of thousands of years from now the equivalent of Baldrick (Tony whatisname) musing over some trinkets found in a box buried in some place of historical place of interest. He holds up the cotton reel and what's left of the remains and wonders what this device was used for!
PoP